Wilde wanted to know more. ‘Your family, Lieutenant Heck: when did you learn about your parents’ fate? Maybe you don’t want to talk about it . . .’

‘Oh, I want to talk about it. I want the world to know about it. There must be no forgetting and no forgiveness.’

‘You’ve chosen a hard path.’

‘I didn’t choose it. The fucking Nazis chose it. In May this year, I went home, five years after I last saw them. A neighbour told me they had been rounded up and sent on a transport to Westerbork. From there, they must have been sent eastwards, maybe Auschwitz. I don’t know. I have had no word of them, so I must assume they are dead. I go around the DP camps, looking at the noticeboards, talking to survivors, trying to find any clue as to their fate. Apart from that, what can I say?’

No tears came, but his voice was breaking

‘I understand, Heck.’

‘No, you’ll never understand. You can’t unless it happens to those you love. My beautiful, ridiculously clever sisters, my brilliant little brother the violinist and funnyman.’ He snorted. ‘That’s enough. You want me to be soft like you, but I won’t be soft.’

‘OK.’

*

They had been climbing steadily into the high Tyrol and it was getting dark. The only traffic they encountered was military: jeeps, troop carriers, armoured patrols. Most of the roads in southern Germany and Austria were untouched by war, but some were in a bad way. Military wrecks had simply been bulldozed to the side of the road, and the occasional crater scarred the highway where a bomb had removed a whole section. These had been hastily and poorly repaired. Military police checkpoints delayed them three times. Bridges both large and small were invariably damaged, but at least they were now passable.

It was slow going and the jeep was seriously underpowered. Now, in Austria, there was less damage, but the road was single track, poorly maintained and deathly quiet. They had been stopped briefly at the border between southern Bavaria and the French zone, but Wilde’s diplomatic passport and the easy lie that they were making their way to Italy via the Brenner Pass had seen them waved through.

They had turned off the main road down a high-banked valley. Green pastures darkened with the setting of the sun, a river of melt water rushed at their side. Above them, mountains towered, their dazzling glaciers reflecting the last of the light.

Wilde had taken over the driving, and as they traversed a small town, he estimated they were twenty minutes short of Almrosen. ‘This rattlebox jeep wasn’t designed for these inclines. What say we stop the night here?’ he said, slowing down outside a large building that had the welcoming look of a guest house. ‘We’ve already missed the colonel.’

‘That’ll put his nose out of joint.’ Heck laughed.

‘You don’t like him?’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Just an impression I get.’